LSPB’s first-time stand at Cereals hailed a great success, with plots to display the company’s varieties

“This was our first time with a stand and variety plots at Cereals, and it was a great success with the two well-attended days keeping us busy with visits from growers and our trade contacts,” comments Chris Guest, LSPB managing director.

“The plots featured our winter oilseed rape varieties and focussed on our portfolio of four varieties available for this season’s drilling, containing the new RlmS phoma-fighting resistance gene.

“There were also plots of our field beans, combining peas and spring wheat.”

Oilseed rape

Murray and Vegas are both on the AHDB candidates list for recommendation this autumn with private and official trials results highlighting their great promise, LSPB notes.

They are very high yielding with exceptional RlmS Phoma resistance, good light leaf spot scores, mid-maturity and are very vigorous – particularly in the spring.

They join Respect and Flemming which already have AHDB Recommendation for the E/W region in 2022/23. The novel RlmS resistance is also part of their strong all-round agronomic package, with Flemming offering Turnip Yellows Virus (TuYV) resistance in addition.

The RlmS gene should give long-term and sustainable phoma control and offer an alternative to the existing Rlm7 gene, which is widely found in current oilseed rape varieties.

The Rlm7 gene remains effective in the UK, but the gene has started to break down in France, with similar reports now appearing in the UK. So the new source of resistance marks an important development for continued genetic protection in the fight against phoma.

The oilseed rape plots also demonstrated Crome and Croozer, LSPB’s clubroot resistant varieties with Specific Recommendation (Sp) for the UK (Crome), and E/W Region (Croozer), for growing on land infected with common strains of clubroot.

Crome is the market leader for this category and has a high gross output, is early flowering, with good stem stiffness and resistance to lodging.

Croozer has a high gross output is early flowering with good stem stiffness and very good resistance to stem canker.

In addition, there was a plot of Resort, the only HEAR (high erucic acid rape) variety on the current AHDB 2022/23 winter oilseed rape list with a strong set of all-round agronomic characters – including good stem stiffness and resistance to lodging.

Spring beans, winter bean, combining peas, and spring wheat

The Cereals stand had the full range of LSPB’s spring beans, winter bean, combining peas and spring wheat.

Lynx is the market leading spring bean and was accompanied by plots of Macho, Fanfare and Vertigo spring beans all with high yields and good agronomic characteristics. Yukon spring bean has the highest Downy mildew resistance rating and the earliest maturity on the PGRO Descriptive List (DL). The LVC (low vicine/convicine) variety Victus represented LSPB’s portfolio of four LVC spring bean varieties with low levels of these anti-nutritional factors allowing higher inclusion rates in pig and poultry diets.

The plot of Pantani showed the first winter bean from LSPB’s breeding programme to join the DL.

Combining peas featured Orchestra, a very high yielding yellow pea, and Carrington the top yielding combining pea on the DL. Bluetime, Stroma, Greenwich and Blueman offer high yields with each bringing different benefits in key characters such as earliness of maturity, standing ability and Downy mildew resistance. Akooma marrowfat pea brings an outstanding yield boost over the older varieties on the DL.

WPB Escape is a high yielding Hard Group 4 spring wheat that is early ripening with very good disease resistance ­– bred by Wiersum Plant Breeding with LSPB as the UK agent.

Chris Guest adds: “Cereals was the ideal opportunity to mark the 125-year anniversary of LSPB’s owner NPZ by launching a competition for growers with a visit to the NPZ breeding station in northern Germany as first prize.

“We hosted a reception for the trade to toast the NPZ track record of successful plant breeding and progress for agriculture and society – and were joined at the reception by two of our colleagues from NPZ in Germany.

“LSPB’s objective is to make a real difference to the UK farming industry through the combination of our UK-based breeding programmes and the expertise and cutting-edge technology of NPZ.

“All-in-all, with good visitor numbers and our two celebratory events, this year’s Cereals was very worthwhile for us. We look forward to Cereals 2023.”